Great Products and People - Top Leadership not so Good - Anonymous employee Microsoft Employee Review

4.0
Mar 25, 2012
Anonymous employee
Recommend
CEO approval
Business outlook

Pros

Work with some of the brightest technical minds in the industry. People are willing to collaborate in the best interest of the customer. The product quality is improving and the ability for the products to interoperate has been improved ten fold in the past 5 years. Employees have early access to beta products and well as are provided a good amount of training opportunity. Benefits are generally good. HR does try to continually improve benefis to keep Microsoft at the top. Pay is good as well in general, it does depend on role and performance. Employees who are doing outstanding work are rewarded well. Employees who are not doing well are managed out of the company (Caveat discussed below).

Cons

If you asked me these questions a year ago, I would answer differently. Due to recent changes in the review model, Microsoft is a less desirable place to work. The company has become excessively focused on metrics which detracts from focusing on the long term sucess of the company. The environment has become more cut throat and a higher stress workplace. Employees are constantly worried about being giving a low review score without much control over it. If you want control over it you need to work all of the time and then that does not even secure anything since situationalism. For instance, if your territory has budget issue in respective clients, or if upper management decisions to change review metrics part way through the year. Manager favoritism runs rampant in the company, it can have a direct impact on how well you do regardless of metrics. HR has covered themselves with a clause in the ratiing system, "In relation to your Peers." Let's say that you have a team of rock stars, not uncommon at Microsoft, of a pool of 50 people approximately 3-4 people will need to be placed into the lowest rating which means they will be on a program that will be difficult to get out of and likely asked to leave the company. Another 6 or 7 people will be rated just above the lowest ranking which will put them in a position where other groups will find them undisirable. Therefore, about 20 percent of the employees are labeled in such a way that they will have difficultly moving between organizations in the company. If you are reporting to a manager that you don't get a along with, your days will potentially be numbered.

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5.0
Jun 3, 2026
Recommend
CEO approval
Business outlook

Pros

Hybrid working time which is highly flexible.

Cons

It is actually hard to reach other teams without formal collaboration because everyone is busy

4.0
Jan 28, 2013
Anonymous employee
Recommend
CEO approval
Business outlook

Pros

1. If you love tech, this is a great place. No doubt you'll talk tech (mostly the MSFT stack) from enterprise to consumer - from PCs to phones to Xboxes - from datacenter to desktop. 2. What were GREAT benefits are now VERY GOOD (took a small step down) but still probably better than you'll find at 99% of large corporations. If you've got family - the value of the benefits is even higher. 401k match is nice. 3. Even with it's struggles MSFT is still a cash printing machine. This means if you can keep your nose clean and do reasonable work, you can have a stable job, pay your bills, feed your family, and not worry (too much) about layoffs. The stock you own likely won't tank, but probably won't go up much either. You'll get a bonus each year and some stock. It's a decent life if you aren't looking to light the world on fire.

Cons

Brand on Your Resume: After many years of losing market share and struggling to be at the front end of innovation and the fact that there's 90,000 employees, don't think MSFT is necessarily going to be attractive on your resume to more agile and smaller companies. Managing Your Career: Make you say this out loud so it registers - 90,000 employees work there. Double that for vendors. It is VERY hard to "stand out" and move up in the company. Don't expect your manager to be much of an advocate or enabler to help you meet your career goals - they are basically trying to survive the stack rank every year too. Not familiar with the stack rank? Check out the 2012 Vanity Fair article called "Microsoft's Lost Decade".

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